Cindy,

There is no doubt that the UT provides useful benefit from if you pay to be here. I've not paid anything more than connect charges on CIS and now my internet access since I've been online. Which I think is enough out-of-pocket $ spent helping others. My CIS bill was $1,200 in '93 (and I was using the OzCIS offline reader!). It was $600 in '94 but that was when I switched to the internet and the newsgroups.

Having free putm was definately a perk. Michel offered it as an incentive to bring MVPs here from CIS and the newsgroups to answer questions. It made me more useful here, but it was Michel's decision to stop it. There is a cost to that decision, both in $ and in the quality of this place.

I think you'll find some MVPs that decided to pay Michel for that benefit, there are other MVPs that are still putms because of having sysop/advisor status, and other MVPs that decide to not shell out real $ to be here. Michel gets enough virtual $ from the hour or two a day I spend here helping people, at my consulting rate that's a rather large sum. But the same is true for anyone, MVP or not, that takes their time to freely give help to others. I don't do it for finanical benefit, I do it because I like to help and in some ways to repay the help others have given me.

>>Steve's post, from maybe sometime last summer, really was true about how dysfunctional this place is for the basic user.
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>Dave and JVP,
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>I was a basic user for a year while deciding how I fit in here. I read a lot of threads about people who pay for stuff vice people who don't.
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>Guess what! I responded to some of the comments in that discussion. I paid the fee and joined up. I got more service.
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>It was also very interesting to notice which of the blue envelopes went to white and which went to yellow on 01/01. Also, some changed quickly and quietly shortly thereafter.
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>Hmmm....